These days we are afraid to have a hero. Because over and over, heroes keep falling off their pedestals. Another one did last year on Thanksgiving Day. Tiger Woods is the most highly paid professional athlete on earth. He’s been greatly admired and sought after by many around the globe. Then the script of Tiger’s terrible Thanksgiving was revealed in the media. What was initially reported as a single car accident was part of something much bigger. That accident damaged a tree, a Cadillac Escalade, a reputation. Behind the harsh spotlight of stardom is a marriage in crisis, children caught in the storm and a man groping to understand how to respond to a moral and career nightmare. Suddenly, all of the amazing ability that has propelled Tiger to sports greatness is eclipsed by his now admitted “transgressions” and “failures.” We have learned that Tiger is not who we thought he was.

As the years speed by, every one of us has had a hero who disappointed us. It may have been a mom, a dad, a husband or wife, an admired leader, a pastor, teacher or coach. Some of us have been hurt and disappointed so many times that we’ve grown cynical about anybody being what they seem to be. And yet there’s something in us that yearns for a hero — someone who embodies the best, who gives us something to shoot for, who inspires us — someone who won’t disappoint us.

I know a hero like that. His birth split history in two — B.C and A.D. His name is Jesus the Christ. Over the 2,000 years since that first Easter, a lot of Jesus’ followers have let people down. Too many of His leaders have been exposed with dark secrets. But never in 20 centuries has the one who triumphed over the grave on Easter Sunday ever proved a disappointment to those who put their trust in Him. He’s kept every promise: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). “The one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out” (John 6:37). “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” (Isaiah 49:15-16).

There are millions across the globe who point to the day they embraced Jesus as the day life really began for them. They experienced God’s forgiveness and had their lifetime hole in their hearts filled by the One who embodied love and grace. I have found in Jesus the harbor where I have always been safe; the “go to” person who has never let me down; the hero who will not disappoint me. The more you’ve been betrayed, the more your trust has been violated, the sweeter it is to experience the joy of having a relationship with Jesus Christ.

You may say that I can find joy if I freshen up my resume or get a promotion. I can experience joy if I get a new relationship, join a health club, do a little shopping, or buy a new iPhone. But in your soul you know that you are merely rearranging the ordinary. If any joy comes from these things, it will be fleeting as all other moments.

The last hero you were counting on died out like all the others. And the familiar dreariness of the ordinary has triumphed again. That is why Easter is so very important. Jesus promised before he died that he would come back from the grave. He did. He promised to transform the ordinary into extraordinary daily moments of real joy. He does. He promised to give life eternal.

Easter is not about the resurrection of a vision of Jesus. It is not about the perseverance of his teachings, or the return of spring after a hard winter on the Vineyard. It is about the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. According to the Apostle Paul, the entire Christian faith is built on the reality of His resurrection. We can either believe in the resurrection of Jesus or not believe it, but we are not to reduce Easter to a sentimental story about another hero who died and left us some moralistic declarations to live by. Christmas was the beginning. The cross was His mission, and you were the reason why He came to earth.

A hero fell last Thanksgiving. Sadly, many more will fall, as so many have before us. But above all the shattered pedestals and broken trusts, Jesus Christ stands pure and strong and safe — as He always has. Because He did not remain in the grave, He’s my hope, my only hope. He’s never going to fail us or let us down.

Dr. Jeff Winter is pastor of the FaithMV Church in Edgartown (Katama).